Recent Finance Activity Follows Disparate Patterns

After years of easy-to-spot trends, the most recent surge of
school-finance activity in state courts and legislatures finds some
states retrenching while others confront fresh legal challenges. And
some judges and lawmakers are expressing open frustration with their
prolonged battles over the issue.

Courts and legislatures from Alabama to Idaho, and from Texas to
West Virginia, are at such different points in their school-finance
struggles that analysts say they are putting aside their national
crystal balls to see each state on its own terms.

"For a while, all of us were trying to put it all in nice, neat
boxes, but in the last six months it has all spun out of control and
become so unpredictable," said Mary Fulton, a school-finance analyst
for the Education Commission of the States in Denver. "Now when people
ask me what is going to happen in their states, I just say here's
what's happening everywhere else--you choose."

Earlier this month, as the Texas Supreme Court put an end to one of
the country's longest-running school-finance cases by ruling that the
legislature's most recent finance law passes constitutional muster,
lawyers in West Virginia were reopening a case that was hailed in the
1980's as a revolutionary step toward ending funding disparities.

And as Gov. Jim Guy Tucker of Arkansas this month presented
lawmakers with an ambitious school-finance-reform package that would
reconstitute many of the state's school districts, Gov. Fob James Jr.
of Alabama was consulting with lawyers over strategies for appealing a
finance ruling after lawmakers and his predecessor, former Gov. Jim
Folsom Jr., worked all last year on a solution that never
materialized.

"No one can predict where a case might go or what a court might do,"
Ms. Fulton said.

Judicial Uncertainty

Some state judges themselves are apparently not sure what to make of
the state of school finance these days.

In her dissenting opinion to the Texas high court's 5-to-4 ruling,
Justice Rose Spector argued that after years of holding the state to a
high standard of equity, the court had opted instead for a lower
standard that would, at least for now, rid it of the finance issue.

"According to the majority, the consitution requires the legislature
to provide a minimally adequate education, which the majority describes
as a 'general diffusion of knowledge,"' Justice Spector wrote. "All of
this will come as a surprise to the litigants. The 'general diffusion
of knowledge' requirement has never been a part of this case."

Similarly, realizations by state lawmakers that finance reforms are
both hard won and hard to pay for has led many states to shy away from
big changes. The history of school-finance litigation, which has tied
several states up in courts for years, may also be creating some
reluctance among judges.

A state court in Florida this month dismissed a case there, citing a
desire not to encroach on legislative turf. Recent months have also
seen lower-court rulings upholding finance systems in Idaho, Maine, and
South Dakota. As in Florida, many of the litigants are pushing
appeals.

And at the same time, the supreme courts in Texas and Kansas have
essentially signed off on the new finance systems enacted by the
states' legislatures.

In both states, lawmakers decided to continue relying on local
property taxes for much of their school funding but used different
strategies to wipe out the most glaring local disparities between
wealthy and poor school districts.

In Kansas, the state put in place a statewide property tax that the
state distributes through a formula.

The Texas legislature chose to require its wealthiest school
districts to choose from five options for shedding a portion of their
property-tax revenue, making that money available to poorer
districts.

On the Offensive

On the other hand, since last spring, school officials in Maryland,
New Mexico, and North Carolina have filed constitutional challenges
similar to the case that recently went to trial in West Virginia. Their
suits argue that their states' finance systems create unconstitutional
disparities.

And the supreme court in New Jersey once again sent the legislature
there back to the drawing board, ruling unanimously last summer that
the state must do more than it has to increase equity among its school
districts.

In one of the nation's most unusual finance debates, North Dakota
officials are aiming at revisions in their state finance system even
though their supreme court--at the same time it found the system
unfair--did not force any changes.

The court failed to reach the supermajority necessary to declare the
finance system unconstitutional, but lawmakers took the decision as a
signal that they should work to prevent future litigation. (related
story.)

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